Frank Farm

Breakfast at home: oatmeal with blueberries, raspberry and orange fruit juice. Telecommute day. Coded secondary page headings to match our recent home page redesign, removing some crufty code in the process and identifying other cruft for later removal. Propogated new stylesheet code to all browser-specific stylesheets, did browser testing. Lunch at home by myself: leftovers. Converted a logo from PDF to AI and converted text to outlines and converted CMYK to grayscale for Chris using Illustrator CS. Faculty and about admin page updates for Susie. Updated the listserv page to include Erik W's new handheld mailing list. Linkchecking. CP155 updates for Chris. Polished and waterproofed my Doc Marten boots. Laundry. Dinner at home with Patrick: chicken. Travis told me about Weatherfox aka Forecastfox -- a plug-in for Firefox that displays weather data from Weather.com in the status bar. I tried it out and like it so far despite what I consider a large size for a plug-in (420 KB) -- will keep it a few days at least. Installed SpyBot S&D 1.3 on all computers.

Helped Joel reinstall his audio drivers and update iTunes. Helped Melissa and James retrieve a file from his computer remotely. Met with Cindy -- a short meeting. CAPSLEAD poster project for Chris. Helped Melissa with a question about Yahoo! e-mail attachments. Lunch: cheddar cheeseburger, fries from the cafeteria: $4.19. Installed SpyBot S&D 1.3 on all computers. Updated SpywareBlaster on all computers. Ensured that Retrospect warnings are disabled on all computers. After work I hopped an outbound N-Judah train to meet Patrick for dinner. I boarded in the middle of the first car because it seemed the least crowded, and when I stepped up I instantly knew why. It reeked of something awful -- urine or perhaps worse. Doing my nonchalant streetwise looking around the car while walking through it, I was scared to find that there no less than 3 people who dressed like homeless people. The bad smell was so strong that it was best to simply leave the car entirely. Fortunately there was some delay and I was able to exit the rear doors without stopping. I hopped on the second car before the doors closed, and all smelled well here. Wait. No, it smells like... marijuana! It's not my favorite smell, but I'll take it over fecal matter anytime. People in the second car were rubbernecking the first car, and we all laughed when we saw a woman in the first car with her back to us clearly waving her hand across her face to indicate unpleasant odors. Dinner out on a whim at So (415-731- 3143, 2240 Irving Street between 23th and 24th Avenues) with Patrick. We had decided on this restaurant over instant messaging and the bad puns flew. After all, who names a restaurant after two-letter adverbs? So be it. Make it So. OK, we go to So, no? I hope So is not so-so. Deep-fried shrimp dumplings with spicy garlic soy sauce, deep-fried mushrooms, noodles with shredded chicken and garlic, hot tea, edamame. The prices are pretty reasonable here -- $6 for each of the dishes, and with larger than expected portions. The dumplings and mushrooms dishes came with about 9 of them each. The noodles dish came in a pile on a plate about 8 inches square. The edamame and tea were included at no charge. Our waiter was repeatedly slow to refill our tea cups, but he was friendly and helpful when we got him. The mushrooms normally come spicy but the menu doesn't indicate that -- just like our last San Tung. But unlike San Tung, our waiter exchanged it for a non-spicy version with no fuss and at no charge. They don't take Amex here. Patrick had a glass of sake. $29.95 after a $5.00 tip. We'll be coming back here even though the tea was slow because I prefer to reward restaurants which treat customers fairly. It wasn't until I got home that I found on the web that So is run by the son of the woman who runs San Tung. Dessert at home: fresh blackberries, dried apricots, topped with whipped cream and cinnamon. Checked on my eBay auction -- someone bought the rackmount case I was selling! I didn't make a profit (wasn't expecting to) but at least I lost less money than if I took it back to the store. (They had a 15% restocking fee.)

Helped Melissa with a question about PDF fill-in forms. Lunch with Joel at Carmelina's: quesadilla for Joel, vegetarian burrito for me. In the afternoon, Joel, Melissa, James, and I went to another office at UCSF to get FluMist -- it's a flu shot but no needles. They drip a sweet solution down each nostril with your head tilted back. It's very quick, easy, and painless. Added first-year students to the student database on the web. Made Patrick clean the fan filters on the rackmount -- they were very dirty! Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover chicken cacciatore. Who is arawlis7?

Woke up early -- couldn't sleep. Installed various updates on Patrick's laptop: Windows, Office, ZoneAlarm. For the past few days I've been running into registry keys ending in 1004!=W=3 that Spybot S&D has found as bad DSO problems, but Spybot fails to remove them successfully. These reg keys also show up on computers at work and on our Windows XP computers. There are a lot of fora on the web giving advice like deleting the reg keys manually or changing the value from 1004 to 3, but the most complete answer I found was at nsclean.com in the Freebies section called DSOSTOP2. The dsostop2.exe file they provided seems to resolve the problem quickly and easily but upon restarting, I notice some of the same 1004!=W=3 registry keys still hanging around. Shall investigate further later. I notice this morning that a hooded down jacket at gap.com I've been manually tracking has dropped in price twice in the past couple of weeks. On November 26 the jacket was $88. When I checked this morning, it is $65. Patrick and I drop off the rackmount server case I sold on eBay at the local Mailboxes Etc type of place in West Portal shortly after 9:00 AM. Breakfast at Village Grill. Picked up toiletries at Walgreens. Left a message for Tina. Napped since I woke up too early. Patrick woke me because his mouse stopped working and he couldn't figure out the problem. He's particularly frustrated by this since he's working on final papers and studying for exams. [transition: 2 hours later] After battery reseating; battery replacing; dirty, then clean, driver reinstallation; checking for mouse driver conflicts; investigating an Unknown Device showing up in the hardware control panel; then finally testing the mouse on a different computer; I determine the problem is a hardware failure on the wireless mouse unit only. It's a Microsoft Wireless Optical mouse, just a few months after the warranty had expired. I unscrew the single screw and open it up -- it's a rather tidy piece of work, but nothing unusual can be found. (Be careful when opening it -- there's a black pole-shaped piece that can easily fall loose and disappear on the ground. This black piece is the reset button on the underside of the unit.) After much researching online for a replacement, I decide on a Microsoft Standard Wireless Optical in black and purchase for the first time from Amazon for local pickup at Circuit City in Daly City. I am surprised by how easy Amazon has made the process -- anticipating questions, guiding me clearly through the process, and reinventing commerce along the way. Patrick and I attempt to have dinner. He has taken a variety of leftovers and Frankensteined a dish out of them -- it's tomatoey rice with bits of vegetables and I can't remember what animal with sour cream -- it's too rich-tasting for me, so I don't eat it. Patrick eats about a handful or two before giving up on it. I have an orange as a snack instead. Patrick takes a nap. Tina calls to chat. I ask her questions about cooking (Are 12 yolks too much for creme brulee? No, not for 4 cups of heavy cream. Is Cook's Illustrated a good magazine? Yes, but she doesn't agree with some of their decisions like the chocolate tasting. Is it true that most professional chefs choose KitchenAid for a home mixer? Yes, but she doesn't trust the sturdiness of attachments -- they tend to unscrew themselves -- and be careful about the wattage which varies from 250 to 525. If you want to mix heavier things like bread dough you need more power. What's a good brand of food processor? Either Cuisinart or Robot Coupe.) and she tells of her Thanksgiving (no turkey, then of getting ill on leftover pumpkin pie and recovering with salad) and of last night's Duran Duran concert and meeting the band backstage and if she had to do it all over again why she wouldn't (!). Patrick wakes, showers, then leaves to spend the evening with Aaron and Jamie. I plan to pick up the mouse at Circuit City and then get a bite to eat somewhere. I am nearly to the store when I realize that I've forgotten my wallet in another jacket, and I can't pick up the mouse without my ID and credit card, and the store closes soon so I can't pick it up and come right back, so I drive home dejected. Instead of getting a bite out, I eat ramen with egg after getting home. I do some dishwashing, vacuuming, then I cut my hair -- the shortest haircut ever -- using the #1 attachment all over. When I look in the mirror now, I am reminded of Shinehead O'Connor.

I dreamt last night that I was given the task of helping to proctor an exam for the UCSF School of Pharmacy. The hallway at the exam location was crammed full of furniture and filing cabinets because the school had failed to plan adequately for space needs. In some places, there's only 5 inches left of hallway, so I squeeze through the small space to travel between the 2 rooms holding the exam. I notice that the filing cabinets have student files in them... and they're not locked! I am outraged but remember that information security worst practices are surprisingly common throughout the University, and so I don't bother to pursue the issue with anyone. I see the name Tina Carter on one of the files, and I wonder if it's Tina Carter from Adobe, but I don't bother to check because I don't think it's right (and somewhere the creators of FERPA are celebrating). Some filing cabinets are filled with ancient, yellowed, stained, or partially burned Christmas cards and other correspondence, and some of this also appears in secured bulletin boards nearby on the wall. Somehow I know it's all of sentimental value to Bob Day (or perhaps someone else, but most likely Bob Day) and that I will soon be asked to scan it all in for archiving. I've never been a proctor before, and no one gave me clear training for doing it, but I get most everything right. The one thing I forget is to bring a watch with me and there's no clock in the room (and I forgot to write down the time they started), so some of the students likely got extra time they shouldn't've. Forrest is one of the students still taking the exam (and getting extra time), but I don't remember anyone else specifically. And the dream ends there. -- I woke up again at 6 this morning, groggy, perhaps another nap today sometime. I realize that Microsoft (or any mouse manufacturer) could program into a small percentage of their hardware that the mouse should stop working shortly after the warranty expires and no one would likely ever figure it out. I decide today ForecastFox is a winner even though it really didn't rain last night like the forecast had predicted. Now to introduce the office staff to it... Went to bed around 8:30 AM, woke up at 11:30 AM. We still have no food in the house, so Patrick and I go to Safeway on Taraval, stopping at Victor Bakery first for a quick bite of Chinese pork buns and American pastries. In Safeway we see again that they don't have Quaker Oatmeal -- the slow version (not quick oats). They were out last time we came here, and we thought it was just a stocking fluke. We decide to not shop here and get groceries at the Safeway in Westlake. We drive to Daly City to pick up Patrick's replacement wireless mouse. At the Safeway in Westlake we discover that they too are out of the same oatmeal. This Safeway also has green-apple-flavored and mint-chocolate-flavored candy canes but none that are regular peppermint. We buy our other groceries. We get home and unpack. I set up Patrick's mouse and the Oyster docking station. It works as expected, and I discover from the Microsoft packaging that the mouse that broke is warranted for 3 years instead of just 1 like I thought, so I might try to send it in for repair or replacement. I wash the car by myself while Patrick works on his final paper for SLA. I go to buy gas and fill up air in the tires and get candy canes at Walgreens. I notice at Walgreens they too have the quick oats but not the slow oats. I guess I'll just have to buy them online. French-pressed coffee. I do the dishes and tidy up the place while Patrick continues to work on his paper. Shower. Shopping online -- I kinda need a new warmest jacket. The jacket I have now is a ski jacket I got new for about $75 at the boy's department at REI Seattle in January 2000, so it's not only inappropriate for urban winters it's quite out of fashion. Didn't find anything that I really liked. I assembled the replacement server from the component pieces I had laid out over the past couple of days. This case matches the previous 2 I had, so I don't have to carry around an extra key -- the locks match! Woo! It's ready to go, untested, but I can't put it in the rack yet. The rack needs to be reorganized, and until Patrick is done with class and Lodestar is live and gelled for a few days I can't tear everything apart as is required. This will be a project over my 2-week holiday break coming up starting December 18. Chatted online with BK.

Cream of wheat, brown sugar, sliced banana, pumpkin pie spice. Dropped off jeans to be hemmed at Danny's Cleaners. WebCT Interest Group meeting -- Brian demoed how to make permanent or persistent links with UC e-Links. Finished updating first-year students in the student database, made the changes live, then notified all test users. Security updates for almost all workstations. Lunch with Joel at Pasta Pomodoro. I had the healthy chicken lunch special with minestrone soup and an iced tea. Joel had conchigle pollo with salad (only the pasta and oil and broccoli -- nothing else) and a diet Coke. Joel had a coupon for a free dessert, so he chose the warm-center chocolate souffle a la mode -- delicious! Installed ForecastFox for nearly all workstations. Linkchecking. Made secondary page changes and other changes live. Tweaked stylesheets. Dinner at home with Patrick: mushroom, spinach, and cheese pizza from a box. Positioned the new server so that I could work on it before installing it in the rack. Watched trailers with Patrick on apple.com. Quicktime is so annoying! Grrr! Why can't Apple learn to use CSS rollovers like everyone else?! Grrrrr! Watched the Simpsons: She used to be my girl -- a very funny episode.

Modified headers on secondary pages -- after thinking it over I didn't like how yesterday's changes looked -- the CSS just didn't give the right look I wanted. Quick update to the admin org chart for Susie. Linkchecking. Edited an article for Susie. Converted schedules to PDF and sent them to Debrah and Cindy for review. Finished spyware page updates. Lunch today was a sandwich from the cafeteria and some pasta salad, cottage cheese, and boiled egg. Met Robin Corelli, who was in the office today reviewing applicant files. Dinner at home with Patrick: bowtie pasta with shrimp and lima beans. Watched the director's cut of THX1138 on DVD. Patrick and I both enjoyed this film very much, and it's hard to imagine how THX1138 and Star Wars I were both born from the same brain.

Usual breakfast at the cafeteria: breakfast package: scrambled eggs, potatoes, 2 sausage, 2 pieces of toast, orange juice. Uploaded winter schedules and announced to the OSACA and all students. Coded a new news story for Susie, sent it to her for review. Scanned in 2 documents for Melissa, converted them to PDF, then e-mailed her the documents. Researched HTML editors that include SFTP support -- there aren't many. Our web admin is migrating us to different servers and increasing security, so I fear I must eventually switch away from my beloved editor of late: Chami's HTML-Kit. I installed jEdit and it took the longest time to figure out where the preferences were (under Utilities > Global Options). And then it took a long time to configure the fonts and colors the way I want them in Utilities > Global Options > Text Area. (It's not clear that jEdit doesn't let you choose foreground and background color for each item -- you can choose only one foreground color and one background color and then the rest of your options just need to fit with those 2 choices.) jEdit is a Java app, so a lot of the Windows keyboard shortcuts that make me productive don't work in it. The text display is also very obviously not ClearText. It has "smooth text" options in the Text Area preferences, but it's of miserably unusable quality. After a few minutes, I decided to try out Lucida Console 14 points plain, gold on black, blinking white caret, dark gold for single selection, and the rest I didn't care much about (yet). The other HTML editor I found which has SFTP is Zend Studio. Haven't downloaded the trial version yet. Installed the Iomega Rev drive at work. The hardest part was putting the 5.25-inch-bay rails on -- the plastic faceplace absolutely must be attached to the rails before the Rev drive is slid in between the rails. What is smime.p7m? Rick S sent me an empty e-mail message today with a file attached called smime.p7m. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. Yesterday Kim VW sent us a joke. Usually the jokes she sends are about marriage or blondes or men versus women, and we find them good for a chuckle. The one she sent yesterday had Patrick laughing so hard it looked painful. The joke goes like this: A new priest at his first mass was so nervous he could hardly speak. After mass he asked the monsignor how he had done. The monsignor replied, " When I am worried about getting nervous on the pulpit, I put a glass of vodka next to the water glass. If I start to get nervous, I take a sip." So next Sunday he took the monsignor's advice. At the beginning of the sermon, he got nervous and took a drink. He proceeded to talk up a storm. Upon his return to his office after the mass, he found the following note on the door: (1) Sip the vodka, don't gulp. (2) There are 10 commandments, not 12. (3) There are 12 disciples, not 10. (4) Jesus was consecrated, not constipated. (5) Jacob wagered his donkey, he did not bet his ass. (6) We do not refer to Jesus Christ as the late J.C. (7) The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not referred to as Daddy, Junior and the spook. (8) David slew Goliath, he did not kick the shit out of him. (9) When David was hit by a rock and was knocked off his donkey, don't say he was stoned off his ass. (10) We do not refer to the cross as the "Big T." (11) When Jesus broke the bread at the last supper he said, "take this and eat it for it is my body." He did not say" Eat me." (12) The Virgin Mary is not called "Mary with the Cherry." (13) The recommended grace before a meal is not: Rub-A-Dub-Dub thanks for the grub, Yeah God. (14) Next Sunday there will be a taffy pulling contest at St. Peter's not a peter pulling contest at St. Taffy's.

Breakfast: cream of wheat, brown sugar, pumpkin pie spice, rice milk, fresh banana slices. Linkchecking. Went through old files from the Tina M era and threw out ones that weren't needed. Coded the news story about Sharon with a photo essay. School plan edits for Susie. Updated current students calendar to reflect office holidays accurately. Pathway website updates for Kristina. Jeremy Lassen had some very nice things to say to me in e-mail. Lunch with Joel at Nan King Road Bistro: we each had our usual (#1 not spicy for me, #3 with twice-cooked chicken for Joel) but Joel forgot to specify peanuts on his. Dinner at home with Patrick: Chinese style pork chops, leftover angel hair with red sauce.

Sesame bagel and cream cheese. Met with Susie to discuss new web stories and photos going online soon. Weeded old software cdroms and paperwork. Opened the new server to attach a plug protector that had fallen off last time it was open. Set up Outlook 2003, imported mail from Eudora 6.1.1 -- no problems so far. Chatted with Rick S who is getting us set up with Sygate firewall on our new server (and network). Updated the visitors page to include Cafe Evolution which claims to have free wifi access. Had a bite of the custard and strawberry pie that a student brought in for the office - yum! Lunch: leftover pork chops and angel hair. Dinner at home with Patrick: corn off the cob, leftover angel hair, salmon in puff pastry with cream cheese, sage, and garlic. Installed Outlook at home. Finished putting all the birthdays I have in Yahoo! Calendar. Ordered an Iomega Rev drive and 4-pack of tapes for home.

I bought my secret Santa gift in the Castro. Met Tony at Castro Tarts. I had my standard breakfast: scrambled eggs, sausage, English muffin, tea. Patrick had a ham sandwich with a mocha. Tony had some kind of pig dish with rice, then a creme brulee. Afterwards we walked to Joseph Schmidt and Tony got to see the chocolates inside closer up. Then we went to Peet's: Patrick bought an eggnog latte, Tony had a latte. We then visited the Apple Store because he's in the market for an iPod. Walked to Central Computer where I bought 2 KVM cables for home. We shopped at the Gap -- Tony bought 2 or 3 things including a brown corduroy jacket and a sweater. Golden Produce to pick up some food, then the liquor store for a bottle of wine. Tony gave us a ride in his car back to our place, and we invited him to join us for dinner: falafel in pita bread; corn, mushroom, red bell pepper potato salad; pita and hummus; a merlot. Over dinner we talked about lots of different things: cancer, medicine, medical studies, intuition, gossip, PLU, life and death, the meaning of life. After dinner, Tony administered a kind of psychological analysis game which purports to reveal how you look at life, and the results for me and Patrick were both quite interesting. Patrick and I both very much enjoyed his company today.

Breakfast: a pastry for Patrick, a mushroom, spinach, and cheddar scramble for me. Spent about 4 hours helping Aaron swap hard drives between 2 Dell Inspiron laptops -- a 300m and a 700m. All went well and I did other updates. Couldn't get CDex to rip properly. Edited Lodestar works all day. Lunch: leftover potato salad and leftover salmon en croute, pita and hummus. Hot sex in the shower. Dinner at home with Patrick: Xiao Loong delivery: potstickers, shitake mushrooms and baby bok choy, cheng bi chicken not spicy (but it turned out spicy), vegetable chow mein, fortune cookies. They gave us 7 fortune cookies. I had 3 and Patrick had 4. My fortunes: (1) You are an angel. BEWARE of those who collect feathers. (2) Share excitement with your best friends as you all run away for the weekend. (3) You live a double life and enjoy appearing to be something that you are not. Patrick's fortunes: (1) Someone thinks you are very special and lets you know it. (2) You are demonstrative with those you love. (3) The light of a hundred stars can not equal the light of the moon. (Think romance.) (4) Confucious says: Mistakes are the portals of discovery. Tried powering up the new server, but the watch battery in the motherboard had died, so setup must wait until we have a new battery.

Met with Rick S for a few hours to set up Sygate firewall. Designed an ad for Cindy to go in the Class of 2005 yearbook. Edited a third story for the web from Susie. Lunch: leftovers. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers for me, a salad for Patrick.

Oatmeal with cinnamon, brown sugar, and banana slices. Student computing committee meeting: Linda Jacobsen was invited to give us ideas on how our committee could get funding. I like her almost instantly because she speaks as resolutely and knowledgeably as an oracle. I felt as though I was in the presence of a divine being who could see fiscal futures as clearly as we saw our own obstacles. Office holiday lunch at Scala's Bistro. This fine restaurant is in the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, and I had never been here before. Joel remembered having eaten at Scala's once long ago, perhaps accompanying a friend to the friend's birthday party. Cindy had been here at least several times before, and I think she was the one who had suggested it. Our waiter was Dalton, and he was excellent. The large and detailed menu can appear daunting to those new to it, and he eased that by making light humor of its complexity in the manner of a close confidante. From my days at Adobe, I remembered a snippet of the training I received: create rapport. All the food was excellent. As appetizers, we had deep-fried calamari aka grilled octopus (Yukon Gold potatoes, haricot verts, salsa verde: $9.50) and a plate of bruschetta (roasted wild mushrooms, caramelized garlic, arugula, San Andreas: $9.00). Debrah also chose a Manila clam chowder to start. Entrees: Melissa and I both had halibut atop a dungeness crab salad. James had gnocchi ($14.25); Cindy had tremezzo -- a crab cake sandwich; Kristina had pesto and ricotta ravioli ($13.50); Debrah had orecchietti with house-made sausage, broccoli rabe, pecorino cheese ($14.25); Joel had steak frites with Caf